The current Secretary of Education is Betsy DeVoss. One of her accomplishments is owning at least two 110+ foot yachts. Her goal, so far, as far as I can tell, is to do away with public education. I have also noticed that school districts she has messed with have all, pretty much, failed. The woman loves charter schools that don't seem to be regulated by the state with some pretty bad results.

This one I find interesting in that all of this is rarely reported. Well, as a matter of fact very little is being reported about what Trump appointees are 'accomplishing'. Instead we have been gifted with regular Trump offenses, failures and lies, etc. Its, basically, an unending offense against what I tend to support, ie. environment, public schools, highways, etc. Its kinda like a failed TV series that nobody really watches but advertisers continue to support anyway. I consider getting rid of that to be the main reason not to vote for Trump as I am just tired of it all. Just blather, more blather, and little else but, obviously loved by those in charge of TV.

The college debt thing remains interesting. China, for instance, figured it out and has started to REALLY produce PHD's Those getting educated in stuff the state wants gets educated for free. Its also of possible interest that China has now become a place to get educated for the right price. All this is accompanied with China doing their own research, and, in some fields jumping ahead of the crowd (small nuclear reactors amongst other things). Basically, they found that that its easier to do it themselves rather than steal it from others. I should mention that Canada too offers free education for those who want to learn stuff that Canada needs. The United States kinda does that but not much. We are, in other words, because of apparent greed, starting to fall behind in a number of areas.

I mention this because of thoughts on college debt and free higher education. Those for "free" higher education don't seem to have any stuff dealing with qualifications, keeping up grades, what the nation needs, etc. Only that gov will pay for EVERYBODY! I continue to wonder where all that money is going to come from. OH, there was also a kindofa study about why our higher education is so expensive. Seems that administration of that field has become a LOT better paid than in the past.

I would point out, yet again, that payments on our existing nation debt will, in the next couple of years, suck up so much money that all the free stuff will become impossible along with a lot of other services currently being underwritten by gov. There is no secret about this but nobody seems to give a damn.

On reflection "Don't give a damn" should be a national bumper sticker.

Of course, any of these ideas are impossible until we dump Trump's anti-agency agency heads. It's not just Education: It's pretty much every single person he has appointed. His skepticism of expertise means he picks contributors or just general crack-pots to run our government. I think he worries about anybody who might be saner or smarter than himself.

That was a time when only white men who owned property were expected to vote.

This is incorrect - the States were in charge of determining who exercised the franchise within their borders, and they used different systems. It wasn't until after the Civil War that we began to nationalize the question.

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The founders expected them to elect staid gentlemen of letters with highly developed senses of ethics to Congress.

That was the HOPE, but not the Expectation - which is why they balanced the power of the branches and the levels of government (congress against executive, federal against state).

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Direct Democracy really was anathema to almost all of them. They were horrified by the idea of dock workers or shepherds voting. We have evolved to a much more democratic society simply by letting most people vote.

I would agree we have definitely evolved to a much more democratic society, and that the founding fathers probably would have thought that dangerous. Looking at the state of our modern politics, I'm not positive they would be wrong.